


Trust

by ChocoChipBiscuit



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, Facial Shaving, M/M, Shaving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 03:33:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8473810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/pseuds/ChocoChipBiscuit
Summary: Nick shaves Deacon; a quiet intimacy.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted for a shaving prompt on the FOKM. :)

“Trust no one, hm?”

“Nope,” Deacon says, eyes shut, voice muffled through the hot towel wrapped about his face. Crow’s feet at his eyes, his gingery eyebrows turning silver. His breathing slow, controlled— too smooth to be anything but controlled, as if he’s falling asleep, but his fingertips stay clasping the arm of his chair, palms loose but for the line of tension running down his shoulders.

Nick chuckles, squeezing a dollop of shaving cream onto a damp brush. His nose crinkles at the hint of sandalwood and something that his chemoreceptors can’t quite interpret. Pungent. Extravagant. A conspicuous luxury, the shaving cream from Diamond City’s best (and only) barber, and it foams to a rich lather as he stirs it into a chipped mug, churning so the mixture grows thick and opaque.

“Still an awful lot of trust to let a guy hold a knife to your throat,” Nick comments, removing the towel and folding it over the sink. Deacon’s skin is flushed pink, damp and shiny— a perfect surface for the lather as Nick applies it in swirls to Deacon’s chin and jaw, careful to coat every stray whisker. He uses his intact hand to hold the brush, his wire hand on Deacon’s shoulder. The hand that still has artificial skin is more sensitive to pressure, allowing more control. But there are no intact sensors, no haptic feedback with the bare wires, so he only knows how tight he’s holding by watching the way Deacon’s shirt crinkles, making sure the sharp-tipped claws aren’t breaking cloth or drawing blood.

Deacon exhales through his nose, as finally, finally that last bit of tension dissolves, eases out and drips away like soap. “You already know where I sleep. Can’t get much more exposed than that,” he says, and maybe it’s a joke, or maybe it’s one of those uncomfortable truths he drops like pebbles, lets them rattle around hard and awkward until you have no choice but to kick it out of your shoe.

All a moot point anyway. Nick’s lost all sensation in his feet, other than a vague sense of proprioception. And even then, his sense of pressure and placement is better the further up the limb one goes; more tangible at the knee, servos and joints feeling vaguely human, then the thighs approaching something that more closely maps to the human-Nick’s memories, where he can feel the weight of items in his pocket, and almost-but-not-quite feel the flex and tension of his nonexistent-muscles beneath the skin.

“True,” Nick allows, because verbal sparring’s really the only thing that will put Deacon at ease, and it’s as much a part of their ritual as the hot towel and the cigarettes they’ll smoke, after. This is an unhurried luxury, unlike Deacon’s usual make-do grooming with a sliver of soap and hot water, unlike most of the other days when Nick’s chasing cases or Deacon’s running packages. They’ve always intersected, of course— picked up clues, notes, left breadcrumbs for the other to follow. Deacon’s good people, even if he doesn’t think he’s a good person. And Nick (or Valentine, or the man whose memories he carries) knows good people.

He flexes his wire hand, uncurls the articulated metal and warns, “I’m going to hold your face now. Let me know if I pinch.” He presses lightly, high on the cheek— enough to steer Deacon’s face, if necessary, and opens the razor with his other hand. There’s a tricky bit of maneuvering as he finagles the grip: three fingers on the back of the blade, thumb on the heel, pinky on the tang. Would be damn near impossible with the bare wire grip, but it fits with practiced smoothness in his left hand.

(And that is a small comfort— this memory is _his_. The human Nick Valentine had been right-handed, but Nick’s accustomed to using his left for things requiring fine motor control. Perhaps his programming was more malleable, or perhaps even a wholly-organic individual would have adapted if forced to. Either way, every time he shaves Deacon like this, left-handed, careful, slow, it’s unique to him, not Valentine’s ghost haunting his motor-muscle-memory.)

Slow, even strokes. Gentle, only a light pressure as his wire hand pulls the skin up, taut, and he lets the razor slip down Deacon’s left cheek, shaving with the growth. Slides his right hand down, pulling the skin as he finishes down Deacon’s cheek. Under the jaw now, and Deacon swallows, some involuntary reflex, some ingrained reaction to someone else holding a knife against one’s throat— but if his heart races, if his pulse jumps, there’s an excitement there too, more than fear or anxiety. A cold razor, hot lather, sharp blade against the skin— a more rousing wake-up than cigarettes or coffee, a study in contrasts and sensation. Breath caged, body still. Held at the tender mercies of a man with a razor, the silk-supple caress of edges and boundaries, soft white foam scraped away with the shaved hair.

Nick himself finds it peaceful, meditative. Simple, repetitive motion, the world narrowed to only these things: stroke, scrape, shave. Pull, press, shave. 

Nick walks around Deacon, his bare feet scuffing against the bathroom tiles. Makes a little more noise than he has to, since Deacon’s still got his eyes closed— and Deacon knows he’s there, yes, but better to reassure him, give him something to read off his presence. Nick doesn’t breathe, doesn’t pulse the way another human would, and even though he has other ways of announcing his presence— nicotine haze, faint whirr of servos beneath his torso, the yellow-lit eyes always a dead giveaway— it seems only fair to remind Deacon exactly where he is, where this synth with the razor is going, so that Deacon won’t flinch when Nick sets the blade against his skin to finish the other side.

After the cheek’s done, Nick goes for the upper lip, pulling down to present a smooth surface. Then lower lip, reversing the process. Under the chin, wires under Deacon’s jaw and tilting him up to let the razor kiss across the skin.

Nick takes the hot towel, which by now has cooled to merely warm, and wipes Deacon’s face. Wipes the lather off the razor, tilting his head.

“Want another pass?” he asks, though it’s rote formality at this point.

Deacon cracks his eyes open, pretending to study himself in the mirror. “Oh yeah. Let’s go for ‘baby-butt’ smooth.”

Second round with the lather now, a thick foam applied in gentle swirls. This time Nick shaves across the grain, slow and cautious. Whole body still, all his efforts focused on the finite motions of wrist, arm, fingers. Deacon exhales slow through his nose, hard enough to tickle the foam on his lip, a small ripple across the surface of the lather. Hand on his thigh, pressing so the bones jump beneath the skin, cliffs and ridges, like he’s trying to seal the warmth into his leg, maintain some contact with his own body, a tiny thread of consciousness sent out of the warm and lingering darkness that takes him when he’s being shaved.

Third round: against the grain, skimming for residual stubble. The trickiest one, the one that sends the coolant pumping. Nick presses his tongue against his teeth, plastic on metal, and it’s a habit borrowed from a dead man’s memory, feels strange and dry in his own mouth (he doesn’t produce saliva, his tongue grates and clicks against his lips if he’s not careful) but it’s still _his_ habit, concentrating as he maintains the gentle angle, makes sure to let the razor do the work without weighing on Deacon’s skin.

Finally, it’s done. Nick rinses with cool water, damping it away with a towel. Adds a splash of aftershave (and he detects alcohol, citrus, something woody, but his human memory supplies ‘bay rum’) and finishes with a dust of talcum powder.

Nick stands behind Deacon as Deacon examines himself critically in the mirror, first in the larger square over the bathroom sink, then using a smaller hand mirror to look at odd angles. Nick stands attentively by, hands behind his back— and while Deacon’s studying the new-smoothness of his skin, Nick looks at the silver in his hair, the faint lines of scar tissue running behind his ears. Even shaved bare, he carries secrets beneath his skin.

(Nick’s a detective. He investigates. But where Piper seeks truths, no matter how hard, how difficult, like shriveled seeds that bear bitter fruit, Nick has learned to leave well enough alone. Not all secrets need be shared. Deacon will tell if he’s ready, when he’s ready. He’s made no secret of how many times he’s already changed his face, and Nick’s made no efforts to investigate Deacon’s past identities. It’d be simply rude at this point.)

“Well, Nick, if you ever decide to stop solving crime, you’d make a heck of a barber,” Deacon says, smiling, and his smile’s brilliant and shining, as much a shield as his dark glasses. White teeth, dark shades, old scars behind his face and new skin wearing marks of age. A full study in contrasts.

“I’ll take that under advice.”

Deacon pulls the cigarettes from his back pocket, and Nick hesitates, looks at the towel and the sink full of lather and the mug that still needs to be rinsed, but Deacon jerks his chin, clicking his tongue. “C’mon, we’ll clean that up later. Right now’s a good time for a smoke.” He slings his arm across Nick’s shoulders, steps heavy and staggering, so that it’s almost an accident when his lips brush the edges of Nick’s ruined face, that zinc-static-tingle when it touches over metal skin, then the tattered edges, a hint of pressure on bare hinge of the jaw, and then Deacon retreats, head on Nick’s shoulder and butting his cheek against Nick’s coat.

And Nick can’t argue with that.


End file.
